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Copyright © 2016 Natashia Deón
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available
Cover design by Elena Giavaldi
Interior design by Megan Jones Design
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-772-5
For Ava
and Ash
and Lee
my sister, Katrina
Momma and Dad
and You.
The stars we are given. The constellations we make.
—REBECCA SOLNIT
Contents
Part I
1 / Flash
2 / Flash
3 / Flash
4 / Flash
Part II
5 / 1850
6 / Flash
7 / 1855
8 / Flash
9 / 1855
10 / Flash
11 / 1860
12 / Flash
13 / 1860
14 / Flash
15 / October 1862
16 / Flash
17 / 1862
Part III
18 / Flash
19 / April 1863
20 / April 1863
21 / April 1863
22 / Flash
23 / April 1863
24 / April 1863
25 / Flash
26 / May 1864
27 / Flash
28 / May 1864
29 / January 1865
30 / Flash
31 / Flash
32 / June 1865
Part IV
33 / Flash
34 / June-November 1865
35 / May 1866
36 / Flash
37 / Flash
38 / Flash
39 / 1870
40 / Flash
41 / Flash
42 / 1869
43 / Flash
44 / Flash
45 / Flash
Part V
46 / Home Coming: 1869
47 / Judgment
48 / The Rigor
49
Acknowledgements
I AM DEAD.
I died a nigga a long time ago.
Before you were born, before your mother was born, ’fore your grandmother.
I was seventeen.
Still am, I reckon. And everyone that was there that night is dead now, too, so it don’t matter that I was a nigga.
Or a slave.
What matters is I had a daughter, who had daughters, and they had theirs. Family I could’ve saved a whole lot of trouble by tellin ’em the things that I know.
But there are some stories that mothers never tell their daughters—secret stories. Stories that would prove a mother was once young, done thangs with men she could never tell, in ways she could never tell, and places she should never. Private stories where love, any ’semblance of love, would lead a person like me to the place I was that night in 1848. When I died.
FOR TWO DAYS and two nights we been running.
Me, and the child inside me.
Pain is trying to get me to stop, make me push away the pain but I won’t push.
My pretty yellow dress is stained red and brown now. Not by the blood of the man I killed, like they think. It’s mine.
The dark of night’s been hiding my running for a while, muffling the sounds of my chest gushing in and out from my own hard breaths. Every few steps, the blue light of the moon sneaks past the treetops and strokes my face, urging me on—the only mercy I get in these hot Alabama woods. The devil’s coming and I have to keep moving, for this baby, for me. But the pain’s burning so bad now, I cain’t hardly do nothing but fall against this old tree, hands slip-sliding down its trunk, stinging.
Barking from the hunting dogs is shooting across the air, bumping around inside me. I have to move faster, run like Sister once told me to.
I beg my belly, “Hold onto me. It ain’t time.”
But this baby got a plan. Its head’s at my opening spot, burning hot, ripping my hips wide apart, carving a way out.
I hold in my screams and bow over hard in the dirt, knees first. A man’s voice shouts, “This way! She’s up this way.”
I want to live.
Want this baby to live.
But she’s betraying me. Every muscle in my body’s slamming shut so I push. She’s tearing through me. I push. I don’t want to, but I push. Screaming mute deep inside myself, pushing so hard but hollering so low they cain’t hear me.
A wave of warm pours out of me, carrying my joy and deep sorrow. Before God and this oak tree, she come. And she don’t cry. I guess she want us to live, too. I move her into the triangle of moonlight that sets my arm aglow. She see me and I see in her the good part of love.
The